


Empire Of Dirt

by skullage



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-24
Updated: 2013-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-16 01:03:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/855994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skullage/pseuds/skullage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean’s heart is broken. The pieces of his life and memory that are missing can’t be filled by the IKEA catalogues scattered around his apartment and the Echelon Percale decorating his bed. His name is Dean; he has a birthday; he drives a Prius; he lives with a man whose last name he doesn’t know. One of these things is not like the others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Empire Of Dirt

**Author's Note:**

> a 2014!castiel/dean smith fic i wrote probably years ago and am now reposting for the good of the federation.

Dean’s not home more than ten minutes before Cas has him backed up against the functionally minimalist marble bench top and attacking his mouth, a handle of his four thousand dollar Ruggero espresso machine digging between the ridges of his spine. The acrid smell of pot is all over him, infiltrating the clean familiarity of Dean’s apartment with the carnal intent that lies behind all of Cas’s actions. Dean can taste it in Cas’s mouth, the bitter hydroponic tang, chemical tobacco; rough, sour. Within minutes he’s breathless and lightheaded from the smoke in his nostrils and the frictive slide of the thigh between his legs, and he pulls back to breathe. 

Cas’s eyes are wide and glossy and bloodshot. Dean can see himself reflected and it’s not a nice sight.

“Stop smoking pot in my apartment,” he mumbles. Another thrust of Cas’s leg ends in a bitten-off groan.

Cas stares at his mouth, his brow furrowed slightly in contemplation. “Rough day?” he deflects. His breath mingles with Dean’s. In his button-down pinstripe shirt and wingtips that cost more than Cas has ever paid for drugs, Dean feels smothered and uncomfortable. The air-conditioning is off and even the small breeze that blows through the balcony doors doesn’t infiltrate the unseasonable haze of heat sparked by the evening sun over Manhattan asphalt, or chase away the lingering smoke.

“Yeah, no kidding. You’re not exactly helping.” Dean doesn’t move, trapped by the length of Cas’s body and arms clamped around his own. He tries for stern, or at least authoritative, but this far gone Cas doesn’t seem to hear him anyway.

“You can tell me,” he murmurs, and lets go to trail a hand down Dean’s stomach. Dean’s skin jumps at the light touch of fingers and he takes Cas’s hand to stop the paranoia of his body issues and the last of the winter (and spring and summer) bloat becoming too apparent.

“Mergers,” Dean lies. “Boss is riding my ass. But, no, I don’t want to talk about it. I just want a shower and a salad and to not think about work for a few hours.”

Cas stares at their joined hands as Dean speaks, tangles their fingers together. Dean doesn’t ask how many hours he spent toking up on the balcony, because he won’t like the answer; from the earthen, bitter stench of him, the one that covers Dean’s pillows and haunts him when Cas isn’t around, it’s been a few.

Cas looks at him then, lets his mouth falll open inches from Dean’s. “I can make it better.” 

He stares with an expression Dean can’t place and should be used to by now: as though Cas is carving him open, reaching into him with his yellowed nails to paint his insides in tar and smudged fingerprints so that Dean will always remember he was there. Like Cas has always been a part of him; a brand on his skin or an ancient language carved into his ribs and one day Dean will take himself apart and line up his marble bones just to check. One day.

He nods acquiescence –– to whatever Cas has hooked him in with –– and braces himself against the counter. A second later Cas has slipped his grasp and is out of Dean’s reach, out of the kitchen. The sound of water hitting porcelain echoes from the bathroom, and Dean exhales.

//

Cas showed up in Dean’s life one day with the air and assumption that he’d always been there, and Dean didn’t question it. When he thinks back on life pre-Cas, his apartment bare of the leaden cloud Cas drags behind him, and lonelier than he is now with two-a-day triple shot Americanos and perfectly ironed cornflower-blue ties and living with a man he doesn’t know, his mind draws a blank. He has a family in South Dakota, a mum and a dad and a globetrotting sister who’s more fond of her knife collection than Dean and his life choices. Their numbers sit in his pocketbook with the names of friends he’s lost touch with and whose faces he can only vaguely recall. He has no emergency contact. When he filled out his forms for his new job as Mr. Dean Smith, Director of Sales and Marketing at Sandover, he was tempted to put down Cas, but he didn’t even know Cas’s last name. Now, he can’t even remember if Cas was there before he transferred, or before he moved to Manhattan, and since no one’s asked for his next of kin it’s a pretty moot point.

There are details of his own life he knows without the visceral experience of having lived them, but there are too many things about Cas he doesn’t want to know. Why did he turn up in Dean’s life, why is he still here? Is it companionship he’s after?

At what point does this arrangement stop working, if that’s what it is?

Cas comes to him sometimes in the middle of the night as the last of the caffeine drains from Dean’s system and leaves the sheets smelling like him, filling Dean’s brain with the kind of buzzing like he’s the one taking hits from the peace pipe. Inevitably he wakes and Cas is gone, but until then, Dean sleeps easier.

At what point do you start taking someone for granted?

Dean follows the trail of smudged footprints and shucked clothes, the hippie shirt and yoga pants, the Rudraksha bead bracelets, to find Cas already in the tub. It’s more than big enough for the two of them, jacuzzi-sized and set into the floor, and that’s likely what Cas had in mind. The steam has replaced the smoke-haze and obscures the walls of the bathroom. Cas’s eyes are closed and his head is tipped back to rest on the porcelain edge; his exposed chest and throat already tinged pink from the heat of the water. Beads of water or sweat roll from his brow, down the sides of his face, the tapered point of his nose, his chin and chest, and catch on the amulet around his neck. He hums under his breath what sounds like an Eagles song, taps his fingers on the tile in an erratic imitation of musical coordination.

Dean strips down quickly, efficiently, puts his clothes in the laundry basket. The water when it hits him stings and draws him in in the way of things that are only good for you because they’re worth the pain of initial contact. His weight pushes the water in eddies over the sides of the tub. Cas opens a bloodshot eye as Dean submerges, sinking until the planes of his body are hidden where Cas’ are exposed.

“You’re here,” Cas remarks, and smiles, eyes crinkling in the corners. He says it with an air of surprise that raises the unspoken question of why Dean wouldn’t be here, in his own home, why here isn’t where he would be after work. Why Cas meeting him when he opens the door is the only real experience Dean has with which to compare all the other facets of his life; not so much an expectation as a luxury. Dean keeps his questions silent so long they boil his blood.

“A woman died today,” he blurts out. He can barely see Cas through the steam that prickles his eyes. 

Cas doesn’t say anything. If he were the kind of guy that expresses comfort through physical contact, Dean might feel a foot on his calf, or a hand, or something else he doesn’t get. Whatever he does get is unspoken and intangible.

“She, uh. Drove her head through a computer screen.” He pauses. The steam begins to settle. “She’d only just started, too.”

Cas lets out a laugh that echoes from the tiles and makes Dean jump. It’s high-pitched and desperate and rolls from him in waves as his body shakes and the water ripples. “Well, if that isn’t a kick in the inner-chi.”

Suddenly the water doesn’t feel so warm. “You’re laughing? What the fuck.” 

“Cosmic forces playing out, right? Must have been the stress that left her wide open.”

Dean stares. “That’s a person you’re talking about,” he starts, but Cas’s laughter, harder now, cuts him off. “Whatever, fuck you,” he growls and stands, feeling the water rush off him, the sound of it loud enough to drown out the stoned croak of Cas’s voice. The noise dies down and the bathroom is quiet save for the wet slap of Dean’s footsteps. He can feel the eyes on him as he reaches for a towel and he stops. Water pools around his feet. He’s angry because he has no right to be. The woman who killed herself - she wasn’t Dean’s friend or acquaintance or a gym buddy or an old friend from college, not someone Dean had even ever talked to. Cas’s laughter brings back the wave of helplessness Dean had felt watching the paramedics wheel her body away. He couldn’t do anything. No one expected him to. It creeped him out, how violent her death was, how out-of-the-blue; a rock twisted in his gut all day and transformed every chill from the air-conditioning, every not-quite-right smell, every innocuous action from his co-workers into an omen. His instincts stirred in his blood until he couldn’t think, and he spent most of the day in his office staring at a blank word document, feeling useless and distracted.

The suction and cascade of water brings him back. Cas climbs out of the tub, his feet and hands slapping on the tile as he walks over to where Dean is standing with his back turned. The adrenaline rush of anger and frustration leaves Dean hyperaware; he can feel Cas’s presence behind him, immobile and resolute as a brick wall. Each drip of water from Cas’s body is another second on the clock, Dean’s life ending one drop at a time. The puddle forming under Cas’s feet runs into the one under Dean until it becomes one big puddle, browned with their sweat and dirt, spreading over the floor and soaking the bathmat. 

Dean looks over his shoulder and is taken aback by the sobriety of Cas’s eyes.

“You shouldn’t have had to go through that.” Cas’s hair clings to his skull, his eyelashes stuck together, water beaded in his stubble.

“Is that your attempt at an apology?”

“You still don’t think you need saving Dean, but you’re wrong.” Cas holds his gaze. He’s too close again, licking water off his lips, breathing too loudly. 

“What?”

“I can save you, Dean. I know that now.”

“Cas, you’re not making sense.”

“Do you trust me?” Cas’s eyes are wide again, searching. Dean swallows and it feels like needles in his throat.

“Yes,” he lies.

“Don’t say ‘yes’,” Cas whispers, and drops to his knees. “Just let me save you again.”

//

Cas is out on the balcony, soaking in the night, a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. The door is wide open and the breeze brings with it the rich smell of tobacco and hops. Dean stops in the doorway.

“Hello Dean.”

“Hey, Cas.”

Cas is staring at the stars.

“Looking for guidance?” Dean asks, not entirely sarcastic.

Cas snorts a laugh and Dean doesn’t get the joke. Then again, he doesn’t get much about Cas.

“I gave up looking a long time ago.”

“Is that why you’re––” Dean stops. He has found a habit of blurting questions out that he shouldn’t. 

Cas swivels his head around. “Why I’m?” he prompts tonelessly. 

Dean swallows. “Why you’re like this.” He waves a hand to encompass all of what Cas might be.

“No.” He’s still smiling his junkie smile and he’s probably off his face because he’s not shaking, but he’s not trying to eat Dean’s mouth, horny like he always gets when he’s stoned, so Dean doesn’t know what to believe.

“Then, uh, what happened?” 

Cas heaves a sigh and turns back to the stars. “Sound and fury, signifying nothing. We’ve had this conversation before. You didn’t get the truth then, is that why you’re asking?”

There’s a headache pounding behind Dean’s eyeballs. He opens his mouth –– to say something? to show he’s offended? to ask for the truth? –– but Cas is still talking.

“You know the female hops flower is shaped like a cone?”

“Um, that’s freakin’ fascinating.”

“A cone, how fitting. Before hops, brewers used dandelion, marigold, ground ivy and heather.” His voice is so toneless and uninterested Dean could be listening to a Wikipedia page from his Kindle’s text-to-speech function. “There’s a fungus that grows on heather leaves with hallucinogenic properties. It’s a shame humans realised. Heather-beer in the middle ages was the closest you could come to legitimate and readily available hallucinogens. But of course, now we have pharmacies.”

Dean clears his throat. “Good stuff. If you don’t mind, I’ve gotta, y’know. Work. Documents and stuff.”

Cas drags the cigarette back to his lips and follows with a mouthful of beer, and Dean turns away rather than watch him destroy himself with everything he can get his hands on. He feels sick and bloated just looking at him. He needs something organic to wash the image away.

The fridge is bare save from an empty pizza box, a half-eaten hamburger, and three bottles of Master Cleanse, one of which is tipped over on its side. His fridge is like his life: the only things in it are half-hearted ambitions and the leftover toxins from Cas’s body sullying him. 

It’s a sad day for the corporate ladder-climbing office-shark when he compares himself to his fridge.

//

Dean closes his laptop and scrubs a hand over the ache in his eyes from staring too long at a back-lit screen. When he opens them Cas is in front of him, a hip cocked against the table and an indefinable expression on his face, amusement and mockery and something else in the slant of his eyes. Dean smiles up at him, because he wants to. 

“Did anybody else in your office die today?”

The words make his mood plummet so quickly he feels the head rush of vertigo. “Nope, not today.”

“Good.” Cas moves closer until he’s standing right in front of him, until his legs shift over Dean’s and he’s straddling Dean’s lap. “That’s good.” He kisses him, slow. Dean’s hands come to rest on his waist. The feeling of vertigo remains.

Dean kisses him back, breathing him in. After a minute Cas lays his head on Dean’s shoulder; the tension drips out of him in a rush, and when he slumps, practically boneless, Dean hikes him closer, wraps his arms around his back. They’ve fallen into a pattern of coming back to each other before they’ve noticed the other one is missed. There are a lot of pressing questions Dean is no good at dealing with and procrastination seems the best option. 

His questions are endless; he’ll run out of breath before he voices them all. 

His thought-stream is cyclical. Cas. Work. Cas. Master Cleanse. Gym. Cas. Work.

Cas.

“There was this one guy,” Dean says, “saw him in the elevator. Started talking to me.”

Cas’s foot slides back along the floor; he uses it to lever himself and push down onto Dean’s lap. Presses his mouth to Dean’s neck and lathes his tongue over the tendon. “Go on,” he breathes, works his tongue over the bolt of Dean’s jaw. Dean’s head swims. The floor moves underneath him.

“Yeah, um. Said he knew me, or something.”

“Maybe he was propositioning you.” Cas’s tongue moves further down, following the trail of his lips as he kisses across Dean’s throat, all the while rocking his hips. His fingers dig into Dean’s hair and hold him in place.

“Cas, I think you’re the only one dumb enough to want to sleep with me.”

“He obviously didn’t realise what a mess you are.”

Dean’s laugh turns into a groan. He feels Cas’s reciprocal hardness pushed into his own. “Started talking about ghosts and supernatural crap. I think he was a bit of a psycho, to be honest. Wiccan-worshipping or something.”

Cas bites down on his clavicle hard enough to bruise. It’s a damaging kind of thing, what they’re doing. Neither of them finishes unscathed. 

“What did he look like?” The heat of him warms Dean’s hands as he runs them under the flimsy material of Cas’ t-shirt, a threadbare piece of cloth with writing and insignia so faded it’s impossible to tell it was once a band shirt. The heat of Cas, the scars across his shoulders blades, are more real than anything Dean’s ever felt.

“Tall? Uh, floppy hair. Had that wholesome look the younger, fresher guys have, y’know? Before they realise how soul-crushing this industry is and it turns them into, well.” He clears his throat. Cas stops to look at him.

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Undervalue yourself.”

Cas stares and Dean is caught. 

“You’re not a lost cause. Not yet.” And then he laughs, and it’s more unnerving than his staring. “Are you going to talk to him again?”

“Who?” Dean leans forward slightly, ready to shut Cas up with his mouth.

“The guy in the elevator. He sounds interesting.”

Dean raises his eyebrows. “Yeah, no thanks.”

Cas leans back. Apparently Dean doesn’t have the power to shut his voice out. “It might be good for you. To meet new people.”

“I don’t need new people.”

“Hmm.” Cas’ look turns thoughtful. “That’s the kind of attitude that got me where I am. You should talk to him. He might be good for you.”

This conversation has derailed and Dean can’t place where he is. There’s a fluttering in his stomach that’s been there since he stepped out of the elevator and Cas is just making it worse. “I lied to him. Said I didn’t bat for that team.”

“Then if he talks to you again at least you’ll know it’s not because he wants in your pants.”

Dean shifts under Cas’s weight. The words are on his tongue and he can’t get them out, can’t say them fast enough or mean them enough for Cas to understand. “But I mean. I didn’t mean to lie.” Instinctively he grips Cas harder. If Cas tries to run, Dean won’t let him. The drug addict, sex addict, masochistic asshole that uses Dean to fill up whatever darkness is in him that the drugs won’t eat away is all that Dean has to base his sanity on. 

“Sure.”

“I don’t know why I did. I just - froze.”

“Of course.”

“But, you get that, right?”

“Yes, Dean.”

Cas’s clipped answers make him want to talk more to make up for the failure of communication. “That I’m sorry I lied. I um, obviously do play for this team.”

Realisation dawns on Cas’s face. “You don’t need to say that.” 

“No, see, but I do.”

“No.” Cas lays a hand on his chest. “Dean Winchester, I know more of you than you do. All sides of you. The parts of yourself you’ve never told anyone and believe no one but you knows. Believe me, Dean, there is nothing you need to say to me because I already know it.”

Dean swallows. The sincerity in Cas’s eyes is over-whelming and confusing. There’s an ache in Dean’s chest that has nothing to do with it. “Smith,” he says. “My last name is Smith.”

Cas closes his eyes and leans his head back on Dean’s shoulder. This way, with their arms around each other, it’s more like hugging. “Talk to that guy, the tall guy. But leave out the part about what team you bat for. You don’t want that biting you in the ass years down the track.” Cas kisses him again, open-mouthed, but it feels like an apology. He tastes of Dean’s younger years sneaking cigarettes, Jo teaching him how to climb without falling out of trees and breaking his neck, how to sharpen her blades properly, how to mount a .22 and not bust his shoulder. Cas brings out in him the childish innocence he never possessed. He tastes like the wild streak Dean never got to have during college and the last ten years of busting his ass working nine to five at job that shrouds him like an ill-fitting, off-the-rack suit.

Dean pulls him closer, balances his weight as he stands up enough to push Cas back on the floor and crawl between his legs. It’s his turn now to rock into Cas’s body, to grasp a thigh and chase the skin of his stomach with his mouth. They fuck on the wooden floor, half-on the rug and bathed in light from the streetlamps outside. Cas laughs all the way through and slaps a hand on the wood like a gunshot when he comes.

//

Dean’s heart is broken. The pieces of his life and memory that are missing can’t be filled by the IKEA catalogues scattered around his apartment and the Echelon Percale decorating his bed.  
His name is Dean; he has a birthday; he drives a Prius; he lives with a man whose last name he doesn’t know. One of these things is not like the others.

He unlocks the front door and walks into a silence he ruins with the tread of his shoes. Night has already fallen and he’s so far past the state of exhausted his energy levels have tripled, quadrupled, the nothingness in his stomach and chest eating him up for something to burn.

“Cas?” he calls. Drops his keys on the bench and his bag on the couch and wanders further into the apartment on shaky legs, feeling the anticipatory moment of time standing still before the world collapses. There’s no reason for him to be scared. People kill themselves every day, they wind up in accidents, but so far Dean hasn’t been one of them.

Cas is half-asleep on Dean’s bed and turns to look over his shoulder at Dean standing in the doorway as the light flicks on. His hair is ruffled and soft looking.

“You’re back,” he mumbles. There’s a bottle of pills on the nightstand next to his head; Dean’s side.

Dean clears his throat. “Yeah. What’d you sleep all day? Gonna get bedsores man, and that crap ain’t nice.” He can hear the southern lilt in his voice and stops talking.

Cas yawns and stretches. “I invited the girls over. The orgy tired me out.”

“That right?”

“Yes. You should’ve accepted my offer and called in sick.” He pulls back the covers and hangs his feet over the edge of the bed. He’s wearing one of Dean’s undershirts and a pair of boxers. A soft weariness stands out in his eyes, one that the luminescence of the overhead CFL can’t dim and pierces Dean from ten feet away.

“You hungry? I’m starved,” he says, just for something to say. “I could do Thai?”

“You don’t eat Thai, you’re on that health-kick.” It’s not the touch of disgust hidden beneath bemusement in Cas’s voice that gives Dean pause; it’s that he’d known. Cas speaks in universal truths, bringing the moment to a standstill without paying attention to it. Health kicks, wake-up calls, late night meetings, these things don’t seem to matter to him; he ignores them with a finesse Dean would call honed. 

“You like Thai,” he responds, clamping down on the fluttering in his stomach. He’s seen Cas eat half his weight in Panang curry in one sitting.

Cas’s face grows darker almost imperceptibly. His eyes close fractionally until his expression turns suspicious, his body pulled taut with tension. If Dean hadn’t been looking he might’ve missed the transmission. This is not a soul-searching look, but it is Dean’s nonetheless.

“What?” The back of Dean’s neck prickles even as Cas’s face softens, the sternness of his eyes petering out into uncertainty.

“I should go.” He pulls his jeans from under the bed covers and within seconds has them on, pills slipped into his pocket, and grabs his boots.

“Cas, what––”

“I’m sorry Dean, I need to leave. I shouldn’t be here.”

“Um, okay.” The sudden change in mood gives Dean whiplash. “Why not? You got somewhere else to be?” You finally leaving? he means to say, that didn’t last long.

Cas pulls his laces tight and stands. “I’m not supposed to be here. I was never –– I can’t explain. You’re too different.”

“No, see, that’s not really gonna work for me.” Dean puts himself between Cas and the door. His heart beats an erratic tattoo in his chest; his instincts are screaming again. “You’re here now. You came to me.” Didn’t you?

“So it’s my fault then?” The venom in Cas’s eyes triggers Dean’s fight reflex. He’s nineteen years old again with a knife in his hand, all that stands between his sense of self-preservation and the world that wants to take it away.

“Whose fault?” he shouts, exasperated. “What fault? What the fuck happened that you’re so scared of?”

There’s a darkness in Cas’s expression, but maybe it’s not fear. Maybe Dean is projecting his own bitter entitlement to keep the things he’s never really deserved.

“It’s not you,” Cas says, low and dark, and it sounds like a break-up. It sounds like the end of the line. “It can’t be you, you don’t exist.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? Hey!”

Cas slips past him and is out the bedroom in three strides. Dean’s body catches up with him before his mind does and he grabs a hold of Cas’s wrist, feels the tactile bones of him and the pulse thumping under the skin.

“Don’t you go disappearing on me, you sunnofa bitch.” The words don’t sound like his. A different language, someone else’s tongue. Cas stops and it’s enough. “Please, Cas, don’t--”

Don’t what? 

“Don’t go anywhere.”

Stay.

“Just stay with me, we’ll figure this out. Whatever you think is messed up, we’ll fix it.”

Whatever it is that’s broken.

There’s a power under Cas’s skin that Dean can’t let go of, can’t get enough of, strokes his pulse to feel it. Finally, Cas turns around.

“You’ve never asked me to stay,” Cas concedes. Dean ignores the whiteness of his skin and the trembling in his hands.

“I’m sorry.”

Cas laughs. “It’s not you. You don’t need to be sorry.”

“Will you stay?”

“You’re not alone, Dean.”

“I know. I have you, right?”

Cas glances up, and despite the guardedness in his eyes, his voice is soft. “Of course.”

//

By the time the movie starts the rice is all gone and with it Dean’s sense of will and resolution. Cas’s head rests on his shoulder, his bare feet propped up on the coffee table, whispers “sanook” as he licks mango chutney from Dean’s fingers. 

“I had a dream last night,” Dean says. 

Someone else killed themselves today, did you hear? 

Cas wasn’t there and Dean dreamt.

“Mm?”

“Yeah. We went to a sanatorium. You had a gun. It was a zombie dream.”

On the television Simon Pegg and Nick Frost bash two zombie’s brains in with a shovel and a bat. Dean watches the cycles of his life repeat one bloody instance at a time.

“That wasn’t a dream,” Cas replies. He isn’t watching the movie but he isn’t looking at Dean either, so Dean can’t tell if he’s serious or if his humour has surpassed sarcasm and irony altogether.

“I think I’d remember that.”

“It hasn’t happened to you, yet.”

All of Cas’s remarks are layered in yet and still and almost and not quite.

“Right. Okay. So what happens, then.”

“Neither of us come out alive.”

The chicken sinks like a stone in Dean’s stomach. He turns the television off. “Never really liked zombie flicks,” he says dispassionately. Cas laughs, but it is a bitter, hollow sound. Dean’s bones are heavy, and Cas on him is heavy, and the feel of soft sheets and Cas’s body under them is tempting, but Dean can’t find it in himself to move.

“You’re fooling yourself if you think I’m all you need,” Cas remarks tonelessly. The words are a hole-punch to Dean’s chest. This night isn’t getting any better.

“What if you are?”

“You need more than two soldiers to fight a war, Dean. You need a family.” He kisses the palm of Dean’s hand.

Their movement from sitting to standing passes quickly, Cas’s hands on Dean’s shoulders to manoeuvre him, hungry eyes, hungry soul. Cas fucks him hard enough to erase the dreams, in the doorway, bent over, one of Dean’s hands on the living room wall. Cas’s amulet digs into his back where they’re pressed together, cold, jagged as the places of him Cas slots himself into as he whispers nonsensical things into the folds of Dean’s skin.

“I’m saving you,” panting, sliding further in with each thrust. A language Dean’s never heard. Names in history that Dean’s isn’t a part of. “You’re going to have it all. We won’t burn, but we’ll be glorious still.” A choked off moan. “Our father’s left us, but we won’t.” Something like a prayer. “I’m still here.”

//

After, when Dean’s done pretending he knows what Cas was talking about, pretending he hasn’t heard it, they lie with their heads on the pillow, eyes wide open and facing each other. Cas’s hand is wrapped around the amulet. He says, “You shouldn’t be afraid.” 

Dean’s so insecure it’s coming out of his pores. He looks away.

“I know how this is going to go.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. You’re going to go to work tomorrow and you’re going to help people. With their sales and marketing investments.”

As far as jokes go, it falls flat, but at least Dean can understand this one. He wakes up to the sound of his alarm, spreadeagled on his stomach, and sore.

Dean wakes up to a void in the world where silence should be. He wakes up alone. By the time he’s steamed his morning latte and closed the front door behind him, he’s forgotten it could be any different.


End file.
